Earlier this week Telstra held their 2013 Digital Summit in Melbourne, a curious event featuring a bunch of US based experts to tell the locals what they should have already known about the changing business landscape.
The reversion of Australian business to a 1950s colonial cringe is worth a blog post in itself, however more interesting was the assertion that every organisation should appoint a Chief Digital Officer.
A Chief Digital Officer is an idea based on the flawed fallacy that digital technologies are unique and separate from other business functions.
The Chief Electricity Officer
Digital is simply the way business is done these days and has been since the electronic calculator appeared in the 1970s – having a Chief Digital Officer is akin to appointing a Chief Electricity Officer.
The role of a Chief Digital Officer is an idea usually pushed by social media experts and other fringe digerati that perversely undermines the very roles they are trying to promote.
By putting “digital” into its own organisational silo, the proponents of a Chief Digital Officer are actually advocating marginalising their own fields. It’s also counterproductive for a business that follows this advice.
The real challenge for those pushing digital technologies is putting the business case for their particular field and in most cases, such as social media or cloud computing, the argument for adopting them is usually compelling in some part of every organisation, but it shouldn’t be overplayed.
More than just marketing
An aspect heavily overplayed in the commentary around the Telstra Digital Summit was the role of social media with most people focusing on branding and marketing.
If you believe this is the extant of ‘digital business’, then you’re in for a nasty shock as supply chains become increasingly automated, Big Data makes companies smarter and the internet of machines accelerates the business cycle even more. Social media is only a small part of the ‘digital business’ story.
Over-stating the role of individual technologies is something that’s common when people have books or seminars to spruik – which, funny enough, is exactly what Telstra’s international speakers were doing.
It’s understandable that an author or speaker will overstate the benefits of their project, but it doesn’t mean that you should fall for the fallacies in their arguments.
Great post. One of the obvious challenges with “new technologies” is the obvious need to hype it in order for it to become mainstream. Few companies have truly worked out how to leverage digital technologies in all it’s variances. Large enterprises are still running legacy systems and SMEs are trying to figure out how it all works and whether it is beneficial for their business.
Phin | Chief Maverick
REVIDIUM International
http://www.revidium.com